Lullaby

Колискова

Audio: Lullaby

The lullaby (kolyskova) is a tender maternal song with which a child is rocked to sleep. One of the oldest and most intimate genres of Ukrainian folk art.

The lullaby (kolyskova) is the song that accompanies the very first experience of music in a person's life. Its hallmarks are a quiet, monotonous, “rocking” rhythm in time with the cradle, a simple songful melody, and tender words. It is a women's, maternal genre, in which love, protection, and the deepest tenderness are conveyed.

Ukrainian lullabies are true poetry: in them live the images of the purring cat, of Sleep and Slumber as gentle beings, of doves, of a little star. The most famous is “Oi khodyt son kolo vikon,” whose melody, by legend, George Gershwin used in the celebrated “Summertime.” The lullaby carries within it archaic protective beliefs and at the same time boundless humanity; it is the first thread that binds a person to their native song, language, and culture.

Cultural Versus

Lullaby

Sub-category:: folk

The lullaby (kolyskova) is a tender maternal song with which a child is rocked to sleep. One of the oldest and most intimate genres of Ukrainian folk art.

35%similarity

Dodecaphony

Sub-category:: classical

Dodecaphony is a compositional technique in which all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are used in a predetermined order (the row). Developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 1920s; Josef Matthias Hauer had independently published a similar system in 1919.